I know this is super old, but I'm adding this answer for the benefit of those searching and coming across this question.
For all of my systems, I create an entry in the Grub menu. (/etc/grub.conf
) This is how you would set it up:
title Reinstall Red Hat Enterprise Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz ks=http://path/to/ks.cfg ksdevice=eth0 noipv6 vnc
initrd /initrd.img
password --md5 <hash>`
The kernel image (vmlinuz) and the ram disk (initrd) can be copied to /boot from your original media. These versions will need to match the version you are trying to install in Kickstart. You may want to rename them something more useful like vmlinuz-ks and initrd-ks or something.
ksdevice is specified for hosts with multiple NICs.
VNC lets you connect to a graphical install with vncviewer <hostname>:1
to observe the status or participate in an interactive install.
The password is there to prevent accidentally booting into Kickstart. You create the password hash with grub-md5-crypt
.
This is the most important part which answers the question.
- To do a remote reinstall, edit /etc/grub.conf and remove the password for this entry, then count your entries from the top to this one starting at zero. Change the
default=
value to this number and reboot. It will reboot into your reinstallation Kickstart!
Before doing a remote reinstall, know that your Kickstart config is good and DO NOT forget to remove the password otherwise the system will stop at the Grub prompt waiting for input. Likewise, if Kickstart fails due to an error in your script it may halt.
You may want to include the Grub entry in your Kickstart so that hosts are prepared at install for reinstallation at a later time. (Especially if these are test/development systems that get reinstalled frequently.)